TV review: The world is a better place because of people like Joe Conlan

Legendary Gaiety Panto Dame Joe Conlan as Nana Potts. Photographer: Leon Farrell / Photocall Ireland

The best thing about having kids is you have an excuse to go to the panto again.

I can remember going to the Opera House in Cork in the early 1970s – my mother probably thought it was posh. I have even fonder memories of going to the local panto in the Municipal Hall in Kinsale, local bus driver Finbarr Hurley bringing the house down as the dame. We all agreed he was better than Billa O’Connell in the big city.

So I was really looking forward to Behind the Curtain (RTÉ Player), a half-hour doc on Joe Conlan, Dublin’s Billa, who was playing his last dame in the Gaiety after 34 years.

It started badly. Instead of Joe, we got Marty Whelan, Donal Skehan, Linda Martin and others talking about their experience of Joe. This is the panto, why didn’t they just collar a few kids outside the Gaiety and ask them how it went?

Thankfully, we got to Joe soon after, and he was a revelation. A thoughtful smiley man, with the kind of warm-gravel Dublin accent you don’t hear from the kids, Joe recalled his time as a non-academic kid in Synge Street CBS in the 1970s, marked by regular beatings from the brothers.

The shows in the school hall saved him, along with his loving mother, who, as he put it, knew Joe was struggling. There is a touching sequence where he walks the empty hall, remembering where she used to sit. You could listen to him all day.

The talking-head inserts from the RTÉ canteen have eased off by now, it’s nice when fellow actor Norma  Sheahan pops up to describe Joe as a booster rather than a drain. The next chunk of the show followed Joe on the Camino, which he did to raise funds for cancer care after his own journey with prostate cancer. It was a bit public-service-announcement to be honest, when I would have preferred to see some more panto action. But they brought it back into the theatre for his curtain call on the last night, Joe saying goodbye to his audience and hoping they would remember him for the way he made them feel. Of course they will, I can still remember Billa and Finbarr Hurley, you never forget.

In strait-laced 1970s Ireland, a man in a dress was a nod to anyone and everyone that there is more to people than meets the eye. It was a shout-out for diversity, even if some of the jokes wouldn’t get on stage these days. The world is a better place because of people like Joe Conlan. Give it a watch.